Top Ten Worst Love Interests In Romantic Films

Valentine’s Day is this week, which means that people are going to watch movies in order to get into that romantic mood. To swoon over the sights of Jack Dawson as his boyish allure literally sweeps Rose off of her feet and into bed in Titanic, for instance. Some may go for a more rugged man the likes of the sarcastic but sexy Jack T. Colton in the hilarious romantic comedy Romancing the Stone. But for every perfect love interest is a bushel of lackluster men and women in romance movies that would be awful partners in the real world. This is where we come in. We’re here to point out some of the most inadequate love interests that ever walked away living happily ever after.

#10: Melanie in Sweet Home Alabama

This woman may be a manipulative habitual liar, but there’s a reason she’s been shoved so far back on the list. Melanie (Reese Witherspoon) appears to have her life in order. She’s one of the biggest fashionistas in New York City and just got engaged to the gorgeous socialite played by McDreamy–I mean Patrick Dempsey. But her world slowly goes to hell as she tries to quickly and quietly divorce her estranged Southern husband Jake (Josh Lucas) before the media, and her new fiancée, finds out in Sweet Home Alabama. She treats everybody like dirt and thinks she’s too good for her hometown. She doesn’t even really like her parents too much and almost avoids visiting them before she gets thrown in jail and needs to be bailed out. Dempsey’s character constantly goes on about how much he’s head-over-heels in love with Melanie, but it’s obvious that she doesn’t really love the poor dope in the first place. Once she sees her estranged husband, you know it’s game over. Who would want to still be in love with a woman who continues to deceive people, including her loved ones, in order to get a better life? Thankfully she changes towards the end but she’s still a fairly nasty character. Poor McDreamy.

#9: Sophie in Letters to Juliet

Here’s another young woman who’s got the perfect life laid out in front of her. In Letters to Juliet, this girl’s got a sweet loving restaurant manager as her fiancée (Gael García Bernal) whose whisked her away to Verona, Italy for a romantic weekend. Okay, so he’s got some work to do, that doesn’t mean you automatically deem your fiancée inadequate as a potential mate. That’s exactly what she does when Sophie (Amanda Seyfried) decides that life isn’t working out for her and joins a Dear Abby-like group of old women who respond as Juliet from the popular tragic Shakespearean play. As she begins to tell many women what to do in order to make their love lives better, she meets the biggest a-hole she could ever run into on the streets of Verona. And what does she do? Fall in love with the new guy, kind of cheat on and eventually dump her hard-working fiancée. You’re a prime example of a woman who would rather go with the jerk instead of the nice guy who’s doing everything in his power to keep her happy. Most of the time those relationships don’t work out too well. Your fault Sophie!

#8: Joe in You’ve Got Mail

If you’ve seen the charming 1940s film The Shop Around the Corner, then you know the general premise for the 1998 remake You’ve Got Mail. Two souls connect through the world wide web, only to find out that they’re competitors in real life. Tom Hanks plays Joe Fox, a business-driven man who wants nothing more than to squash a small bookstore and let corporate America win. But wait! He ends up falling in love with his competitor whom he’s already treated like total garbage. Within the span of the film he stood her up on a date, lies throughout most of their friendship and still manages to have her fall in love with him. Have a long and happy life filled with lies Kathleen (Meg Ryan) because this guy is never going to change. Also, there’s nothing redeemable about this character’s personality compared to the James Stewart’s version in The Shop Around the Corner. I’d fall for Stewart’s character over Hanks’ character any day of the week.

#7: Robbie in The Wedding Singer/Reed in Valentine’s Day

Men like this are the absolute worst. They’re the perfect examples of guys who are so incredibly desperate to be in a relationship that they’ll latch onto the first girl they lock their eyes on. Both Robbie (Adam Sandler) in The Wedding Singer and Reed (Ashton Kutcher) in Valentine’s Day suffer the same fate at the beginning of their stories: their fiancée left them in the dirt. Broken-hearted, both of them turned their shoulders and found the safe, sweet girl who’s been near them that whole time. For Robbie it was the convenient new girl Julia (Drew Barrymore) and for Reed it was his best friend Julia (Jennifer Garner). Anybody else think it’s funny both of the guys’ names start with an R and the girls names… forget it. Anyways, we find it to be absolutely awful that they cling onto these girls right after their number one prospect breaks their hearts. These girls should tell them to get lost and think clearly before they consider them as potential lovers, but these characters are both in romantic comedies so you know it ends with a happily ever after.

#6: Walter in His Girl Friday

Ladies, this is the kind of smooth-talking, manipulative guy that you should avoid at all times. Then again, if he looks like Cary Grant, that could be very difficult to accomplish. In His Girl Friday, newspaper editor Walter Burns is the best at what he does, getting stories out there for the public to read. But when his ex-wife Hildy (Rosalind Russell) makes plans to remarry, Walter begins to do everything in his power to prevent that from happening. Now her fiancée is a really sweet guy who is very capable of providing a loving, secure life for his future bride, but Walter still knows how much his ex-wife loves working for the newspaper. He uses that to his advantage when he keeps her on to write one last story. Within the span of 24 hours not only does Walter close in on winning over his ex-wife, but finds clever new ways to keep the fiancée at bay, even by throwing him in jail at one point. Scum bags like this don’t deserve women’s attention but it’s their smooth moves that win us over, only to break our hearts shortly down the road.

#5: Mr. Coulson in Never Been Kissed

Men and women have both entertained the fantasy of taking part in a student-teacher relationship. But when Sam Coulson (Michael Vartan) finds himself getting closer to undercover reporter turned fake high school senior Josie (Drew Barrymore) in Never Been Kissed, we have to shake our heads in shame. Josie doesn’t even think twice about how inappropriate a relationship of this nature can be, especially considering that he’s got a girl on the side. Not only is he in some ways cheating on his girlfriend but, if Josie were actually seventeen, if he were to make any romantic advances on her he could get in serious trouble with the school. Thankfully Josie is near his age and the relationship isn’t frowned upon, but what if it were some other high school student in Josie’s place? Mr. Coulson, we don’t think you should be surrounding yourself among blossoming young women.

#4: Kate & Luc in French Kiss

Once in awhile you’ll get two characters together onscreen that not only are wrong for each other, but are horrible people individually. Enter Kate (Meg Ryan) and Luc (Kevin Kline) in French Kiss. Luc is a con-artist, a thief who slides his way next to Kate because she happens to hold some jewels he robbed in Canada. At the same time Kate is such a high-strung, unhappy individual that you wonder how she managed to even have a fiancée, even if just for a minute. The fiancée (Timothy Hutton), obviously fed up with his girl’s personality and awful fashion sense, falls in love with a sexy French woman who treats him like a king. Utterly devastated, she flies off to France in order to win back her love. On the way she runs into Luc and is more or less stuck with him for the rest of the movie. Then sparks fly between these two disgusting individuals and by the end of it, you guessed it, they fall in love. Neither of them really change, except for their appearances, and still continually clash with their own personalities. Sure, he may have a hot accent, but being a man from a foreign country doesn’t mean he’s the guy of your dreams.

#3: Abby & Mike in The Ugly Truth

Speaking of disgusting couples, the two love interests in The Ugly Truth should be kicked down and buried in a hole forever. Abby (Katherine Heigl) is the epitome of a super high-strung broad who will never be happy no matter what great things life throws at her. Then there’s Mike (Gerard Butler), the definition of stupid male masculinity who believes that his cockiness and rugged looks are enough to bag any woman on the planet. He thinks he’s God’s gift to women, but thankfully Abby tries her best to bring him down to Earth, proclaiming that he’s not when the two quickly begin to butt heads. Love is thrown somewhere in the equation shortly after as they begin falling for each other. We’re convinced that if these two people existed in real life that one party would seriously kill the other by their one month anniversary, if they even made it that far.

#2: Troy in Reality Bites

Nope, I don’t care how much you love Ethan Hawke as the grungy, artistic Troy in Reality Bites. He may look like a hurt puppy dog, but he knows what he’s doing. He’s a little boy in a man’s body who pouts and storms off into the corner every time he doesn’t get his way. He acts like this around his not-so-secret love and best friend Lelaina (Winona Ryder) whom he treats like dirt. Unfortunately Lelaina isn’t too bright as she ditches successful, kind hearted Michael (Ben Stiller) and goes for the sloppy starving artist. We all know Lelaina’s situation. She’s that one friend who was in the depressingly long relationship with a guy that everyone knew wasn’t the best from the start, and she’s only happy once she breaks away from that emotionally draining time. Yuck. No thank you.

#1: Julianne in My Best Friend’s Wedding

My Best Friend’s Weddingis a really cute, funny story but nobody should ever take notes from Julianne’s (Julia Roberts) character. She find her ex-lover Michael (Dermot Mulroney) appealing again because she figures he has no love life and therefore can go in for the kill. On top of that, she believes somewhere in her twisted mind that she’s the most suitable candidate if he were ever to get married one day. Michael certainly doesn’t think so since he’s just a few days away from tying the knot with super sweet bride-to-be Kimberly (Cameron Diaz). Julianne plays every dirty trick in the book in order to prevent the marriage from happening. At one point she almost wins but only when she’s confronted by her lost love does she realize that she should probably do the right thing and bring these two back together. If we were Kimberly, we’d force Michael never to associate with the likes of her again.